


The War of Seven Bells

by Merileigh



Series: Bound [2]
Category: GreedFall (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Machinations and intrigues and plots, Or just another day in Serene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22740274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merileigh/pseuds/Merileigh
Summary: In Sérène we called it the War of Seven Bells, seven hours of chaos and a political near-disaster. In Thélème and the Bridge Alliance, it had been one more day in the war that had gone on so long it didn’t need a name. It was just The War.
Relationships: Constantin d'Orsay/De Sardet, Kurt & De Sardet (GreedFall)
Series: Bound [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619806
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. La Scène

“There are some lessons that can only be learned in the Coin Tavern,” our professor said with his usual mildness. I felt entirely justified in turning to jab my finger against Anan’s chest, raising my brows at him to warn him off from saying anything more. He was trying—unsuccessfully—to get me a scolding when he’d been neck deep in events at the Coin Tavern last night along with Constantin and me.

“Diplomacy isn’t reserved for the Academy or the halls of government,” Sir de Courcillon continued, giving no sign that he was aware of our silent scuffling beside him. “One never knows who may be influential or who may have information. And it is a good idea to know how to hold one’s drink.” At that, he patted my shoulder, by which I knew that we’d been caught.

“She needs more practice at that, Sir,” Anan said over my head, hardly able to keep from laughing.

I shot him a last glare before I turned to face the scene before us again, but it was true. There didn’t seem to be enough water in the world this morning to dampen the pounding in my head.

Beneath us where we sat in the back gallery of the Academy’s great hall, people were starting to gather. The dividing lines were easy to see—the grey robes of priests and polished ceremonial armor of bishops on the left side of the hall and the green robes of doctors and scholars on the right. Others, observers like us, had climbed the stairs and were filing in to sit on the benches in the galleries, sticking with their colors like their compatriots below. Sir de Courcillon, Anan, and I were the only ones in the back gallery, the only occupants of a no man’s land, it seemed. The loud hum of a hundred people murmuring in the enclosed space rose up to the vaulted ceiling and echoed off the walls.

Even still, I heard the sounds of someone taking the gallery stairs two at a time and knew before I heard him call, “Wait for me!,” to someone below that Constantin had arrived. I didn’t turn when he came in or when he put a hand on my shoulder, addressing Sir de Courcillon. “Professor, I’m off,” he said. “I am entrusting you with my cousin—make sure she pays attention. Our cultural exchanges last night have worn her out.”

I had to remind myself that I had no love for him this morning to keep from laughing at that. Cultural exchanges—is that what he’d decided to call it? “Shirker,” I said, accusingly.

He bent down until his face was close to mine, and I had to lean away to look at him. He smiled in the face of my hangover with no sign of being sympathetic, his pale skin shadowed by the wide brim of his hat. “Fair cousin,” he replied. Damn him for being so irrepressibly cheerful this morning. “My brilliant diplomat, this is your area of expertise. My job is merely to come in at the end and take all the credit.” With that, he dropped a kiss on top of my head and straightened. He paused a moment, and I looked over to see Anan nodding at him.

As Constantin was leaving, I called after him, “Enjoy yourself.”

“I will tell you everything tonight, Cousin!”

I had been looking forward to today’s talks before Constantin had been invited out to the forest park, a rare trip out of the city, with scholars who had come with the Bridge Alliance delegation. And before I had been too successful for my own good in the tavern. I was finding it hard to be enthusiastic or even interested this morning. I saw Anan glance at me out of the corner of his eye and thought about leaning against him, but only for a moment.

The kiss, I knew, had been for Anan’s eyes. Ever since he had discovered our affair, Constantin had lorded over Anan almost the way he’d done when we were children and some servant’s child had been unlucky enough to attract his ire. Neither Anan nor I had let slip a word that things between us had changed; Constantin had seen it in my face one day while we were being tutored together. When I’d finally convinced him to tell me what had him so bent out of shape, he’d said that my face was too honest for my chosen work.

Arrogance was hardly the worst Constantin could do. We were still down a palace doctor after everything Constantin had done to drive away the man who’d been involved in poisoning him almost four years ago. Although, to be fair, I’d had my hand in that, too.

Anan had joined us as a student of Sir de Courcillon only several months ago, but it didn’t seem as though he would be scared off. He was a nephew of the governor of Al Saad, and I had to imagine that he had survived his share of posturing and political intrigues the same as we had. He had a sharp mind and an interest in our studies—unlike Constantin, who dedicated his mind to coming up with ways to distract our professor and take us off task more often than not. Anan also had beautiful dark skin, strong shoulders, and brown eyes that were surprisingly unguarded and honest. Once when we had been debating in the evening, he had leaned across the table, caught up in something he was saying, and our eyes met and held. The possibility hung in the space between us. And I had leaned forward and kissed him.

Before that moment I hadn’t truly been sure that he’d been attracted to me, with my hair, as short as a man’s, and my now-entrenched habit of dressing in a man’s breeches and coat. That, along with the birthmark that covered my jaw on the left side of my face, meant that I felt more like an oddity than an object of desire most of the time. But his hands had come up to my face, the coat and everything under it had quickly come off, and he’d convinced me otherwise.

We still debated outside of our tutoring, but in my chambers or his, and those debates usually began, continued, or ended in one bed or another.

Enough of these distractions. My mind was wandering, and I was afraid I wouldn’t have the discipline to keep it on the discussions in the hall today. At least the lead negotiators had climbed the dais and were taking their seats; they were about to begin. This was the first time there had been peace talks between the two nations in my lifetime. The outcome of these conversations could change the political map on the continent.

The bells in the towers that crowned the face of the great hall tolled the hour—nine o’clock. When the last resonant echoes had faded, a bishop seated in the front row rose and offered a prayer to Saint Matheus, and all of the heads on the left side of the hall were bowed. It was a concession the Bridge had made to Thélème, and if no one on the right side of the hall would have shown similar devotion—willingly or otherwise—at least they stayed silent. Behind me, the stairs were creaking as a latecomer walked up to the gallery. I turned to see a gentleman from the Bridge Alliance taking a seat on the far end of our bench. He was tall, middle-aged, with olive skin and a beard that had been carefully trimmed and oiled, and dressed in an embroidered kaftan and turban of blue silk—someone from one of the metropolitan centers of the Bridge, then, maybe a government official. He looked our way and caught me studying him, giving me a nod and the brief flicker of a smile before fixing his attention on the proceedings below.

Not an hour had passed before I had to leave the bench to stand in the back of the gallery, so I could massage my temples without the professor seeing and avoid the worse sin of nodding off right beside him. From where I stood, I could only see the tops of the heads on the dais. Sir de Courcillon and Anan in front of me were quietly discussing some point that had been made. The newcomer from the Bridge Alliance, when I glanced at him, wasn’t looking down at the dais but at the gallery where his countrymen sat. I followed his gaze and saw nothing to catch my interest at first, but some nudge of intuition made me look again.

There was something off about the group that sat in the gallery. There were ten of them, men and women not much older than I was, all dressed in the green robes the scholars wore. But they did not sit like scholars. Backs straight, feet evenly placed, at attention—they sat like soldiers. They did not talk among themselves as so many others were, under their breaths. And while they watched the negotiators on the dais, they gave no sign that they were listening to the words that were being spoken.

I had taken two steps to reach Sir de Courcillon’s shoulder and bent down to speak with him when I heard an unfamiliar voice. “Lady.” It was the man from the Bridge. When I turned to look at him, he was watching me. “Please do not trouble yourself.”

That was when the first shots were fired.

“Down!” I shouted, and my voice was lost in all the other shouts and screams rising from below and the crackle of magic. Reflexively, I grabbed Sir de Courcillon’s shoulder and pushed him along with me as I ducked behind the low wall at the front of the gallery. “Professor, get down. –Anan!”

Anan had reached the wall and crouched down by my side. I knelt in front of the professor, one hand on the hilt of my knife. Guns, long blades, and rings should have left their owners’ hands before they entered the hall. Someone had failed in their duty.

I looked over the edge and saw the soldiers in the gallery nearest us kneeling as we were, behind the gallery wall, resting their rifles on the ledge to steady their aim. Two of them were frozen in place, caught by stasis spells. Below, both delegations were in chaos. The lead negotiators from Thélème were dead on the dais, red streaks on the wall behind their heads. Several bodies lay across the benches on the left side of the hall. I could see no one moving in the other gallery. The priests below us who were still alive were trying to flee—but toward the Bridge Alliance delegation, to get below the gallery that held the riflemen. There the two delegations were brawling hand to hand and trampling any who were unlucky enough to fall underfoot.

A burst of light left purple spots floating in my vision, and I heard the cries of those who’d been thrown by the spell, tossed backward like leaves in a gust of wind to land on their companions. The mages may not have their rings, but they weren’t defenseless.

There was a shot close by, and the mage who had cast the spell collapsed where he stood. The man from the Bridge was coming toward us, moving in a crouch against the wall, a pistol in his hand.

I drew my knife and held it in a defensive, reverse grip, the blade pointing opposite my thumb. “No closer,” I said. I was angry enough that my voice did not shake.

He held out his empty hand to me. “Easy,” he said, his voice so low I almost could not hear him. “Let me help you leave, Lady. I’m no threat to you or your friends.

“Here,” he added, reaching to pull another pistol from a belt that he wore beneath his kaftan. He held it out to me, the barrel in his hand. Almost, I didn’t take it. The situation was volatile enough without anyone being able to accuse me of shooting one of our allies. But I would feel better having a gun within my reach. I took the pistol, tucked it into my belt, and ignored the part of me that wondered when I had begun to feel naked when I wasn’t armed.

Anan touched my leg. “He’s right, De Sardet. We can’t stay here.”

I gritted my teeth, but I nodded. If he had wanted to harm us, he’d had ample opportunity. On that fact alone, I would have to chance trusting him for the moment.

“Let’s try the door,” I said, and turned to Sir de Courcillon. “Professor, come, and stay low.”

But when we reached the door, raised voices came up from below. I leaned out of the door frame to spy between the stair rails. “Priests—they’ve made it out of the hall.” I looked over my shoulder at our helpful stranger. “We may make it down the stairs, but I doubt you will.” And Anan would be in danger, too. There was no way to disguise him as anyone other than a citizen of the Bridge Alliance. “We need another way.”

“De Sardet,” said Sir de Courcillion. “I know a way that will be safe.”

I met his eyes and let out the breath that was pent up in my chest when he reached out to squeeze my arm. “We’ll follow you, Professor.”

A door had been constructed in one wall of the gallery, artfully designed to look like nothing more than another expanse of plaster and molding. Sir de Courcillon felt along the wall until his fingers found what they were searching for, and pressed, and the door swung outward on quiet hinges.

“Always know your home, my young students,” he said. I could tell he was pleased with himself, and I felt a smile twitching in the corners of my lips in spite of everything.

We left the gallery for a narrow, wooden staircase leading down to the main floor of the hall. We didn’t need to worry about the noise of our footsteps. As we were going down, the bells began to toll, ten strikes and more—not the hour, but an alarm that rang out in brass tones over the city, shattering the morning.


	2. Les Acteurs

We came out of the great hall through a half-forgotten side door into a small courtyard, and from there into an alley that ran between the hall and the building next to it, an imposing multi-story edifice constructed of the uniform grey granite blocks that made up so much of the new city. Muffled cracks of rifle fire still came from inside. As we stopped to listen at the courtyard gate, I could hear more and more voices raised from the front of the building as those who had escaped spilled out onto the street.

I led the others away, toward a street that would eventually wind around to the overlook and the road that descended the cliffs to the old city. As we walked, the man from the Bridge caught up with me to walk by my side. We turned the corner.

“Lady,” he said, glancing down the next street that we passed. “Eventually we will have to double back, to reach the palace.”

“The cliff road is faster,” I said. I stopped and regarded him, my hands planted on my hips. “We’ve missed introductions. Lady De Sardet—but I think you knew that already.”

“Gilad Nasri,” he replied, meeting my glare with his brows drawn as though he was concerned. “You are right that I do know your name—and Sir de Courcillon, of course,” he said, bowing his head briefly in respect. “And you are?” he added, studying Anan with interest.

“Anan Sadeghi.”

“Ah. From Al Saad?” Anan nodded.

“But none of this tells us who you are, Gilad Nasri,” I broke in, “or why I shouldn’t have you arrested for committing murder at a peace negotiation.” I felt more than saw Sir de Courcillon give me a look. I was being too rash, I knew, but I wasn’t inclined to walk one step further with this man without knowing more—or to be polite in asking for information.

He gave me a tight smile. “I think it is safe to say that the negotiations had ended by that time,” he said. “But, please—allow me to accompany you to the palace. I do not want the Bridge’s allies and friends to be caught in our perennial war.”

“I think not,” I started to say but was interrupted by the sound of Sir de Courcillon clearing his throat too loudly for it to be anything other than a warning to me. I closed my mouth.

“Professor Nasri,” he said, “of course we should go to the palace together. We will need to give an account to the Prince d’Orsay, if you’re willing. –Anan, do you know the way to the overlook?”

With Anan in the lead walking with Nasri, Sir de Courcillon matched his stride to mine. He waited for me to speak.

“Professor, forgive me. I spoke too quickly.” I had begun to feel wretched again, not only because of a dry throat and pounding head but because I had made such a mistake in front of him.

“You were shaken, De Sardet,” he said, kind as always. “It is hard to suppress an instinctive reaction after the morning we’ve had. But the situation is perhaps more complicated than we can comprehend at the moment.”

“Do you know this man?” I asked him. “You called him Professor?”

“Yes, by reputation,” Sir de Courcillon replied slowly, considering. “He is a lecturer at Al Saad University. And very well known throughout the Bridge Alliance.”

“What lecturer shoots so well?”

“The Bridge Alliance has been at war longer than you or I have been alive, my young student. Many families see it as an honor for their sons and daughters to serve in the military. I am certain Professor Nasri was as much a soldier as our Kurt at one point in his life.” I felt Sir de Courcillon’s gaze on me as I studied the way Nasri carried himself, the set of his shoulders. “Shall we try to hear what our new friend is saying?” I looked at him and smiled, surprised to see something devious in my old professor’s eyes.

But it was Anan who was speaking. “…thinks that we can keep the Ordo Luminis out and their missionaries and merchants will honor our laws in Al Saad. –But what need do we have of them at all?

“I know what the war has cost us,” he continued, more quietly, but he spoke with the same intensity I knew so well. I was looking at his back, but I could picture his face, the way he would be looking down and a little to the right, the furrow in his brow. “But wouldn’t friendship with Thélème cost us more?”

“It is wise to be skeptical,” Nasri replied. “The Ordo Luminis have their hands in all of Thélème’s affairs. Wherever Thélème goes, they bring disappearances, deaths. Oppression.”

“I’m not sorry—” Anan started, but we had reached the overlook and the beginning of the cliff road. Anan and Nasri stood aside to let a unit of the city guard by, blue-and-silver clad guardsmen and women jogging in pairs, panting with the effort of climbing the face of the cliffs. They didn’t stop, but picked up their pace at their commander’s curt order, disappearing down the street we had just left.

Sir de Courcillon leaned over the stone wall that marked the cliff’s edge. “The way is clear for the moment,” he said, gesturing toward the gap in the wall. “But we should go quickly.”

The cliff road was narrow, laid out of flagstones that had been carried and placed by hand decades ago to secure the path that had been dug out of the rock face long before the first buildings of the new city had been built. Above us, the light stone faces of the new city shone in the sun; below, chimney smoke trailed over roofs that sagged and almost seemed to lean against one another. I could see the horizon across the glittering gray-green waves of the sea and smell salt in the air without all the city smells that usually masked it.

“You’re thinking about Teer Fradee,” Anan said. He had stopped to wait for me.

I smiled but kept my eyes on the horizon. “Wrong,” I countered, so he wouldn’t think he knew me completely. “I was thinking about life aboard a boat.”

“The boat that will take you to Teer Fradee.”

That earned him a laugh. “All right, that’s fair.”

He said nothing for a few moments as he walked next to me, looking ahead, then, “You’re brave, to leave everything you know.”

“No,” I answered, “it isn’t that.” It didn’t feel like bravery to leave Sérène; it felt like necessity. How would we breathe, if we never left?

The road began to slope more gently, and we walked in the shade of a few hardy trees that had dug in their roots at the bottom of the cliffs. Another unit of the Guard was mustering here to be sent up. We passed through their ranks in single file and reached the cobblestones of the city streets.

Some sense in me was beginning to be able to tell when the quiet hid danger. I noticed when the guards stopped their muttered conversations behind us. But noticing a breath before gave me no time to do anything—not even to speak a word of warning—when four shots rang out in quick succession, echoing off the cliff face, and Nasri fell forward.

“No—” I grabbed Anan’s hand to stop him when he turned and it seemed as though he was about to confront them. “See if he’s alive.” For a breath I was afraid he wouldn’t listen. Then his chin jerked in a nod, and I let him go kneel beside Nasri.

My borrowed pistol was in my hand, but I hadn’t raised it. The people in front of me should not have been enemies; they were Coin Guards uniformed in our blue and silver. They had re-formed their ranks, and there was no way for me to tell which of them had fired at us.

“I will speak with them.” Sir De Courcillon touched my arm briefly, and I felt for the first time how tense I was, my fingers clenched on the gun. I took a step to follow him, but Anan called my name.

Nasri was gasping for air, lying on his stomach on the cobblestones. Anan had taken his own turban off and was holding the fabric to Nasri’s wounds; the blue silk was soaked through. I shoved the pistol back into my belt and knelt beside them. Anan’s eyes when they met mine were stricken, which told me what I needed to know.

There was a scrabbling sound, and Nasri’s hand closed tight on my wrist. “Tell—” he started and then choked. He dragged in a breath. His gaze held mine so fiercely that I couldn’t have spoken, even if I’d had the words to say. “Tell the princess where her son has gone—” He spent all of that breath on the words, his voice strained, and then clenched his teeth on a moan, closing his eyes.

“Sir?” Anan put a hand on Nasri’s shoulder. But there was a rattling in Nasri’s breaths. His hand on my wrist trembled once, and then he was silent and still.

“Anan…” Our eyes met over Nasri’s body. Then he looked away, toward Sir de Courcillon, who was coming back to us flanked by two guardsmen. He curled the fingers of one hand in the bloody silk and bared his teeth. His other hand reached for a weapon that he wasn’t carrying.

“Anan, don’t.” I put my hand out to keep him where he was.

Our professor gave us both a look that said to keep our silence before he spoke. “The Guard will take him, my young students. –I am exceedingly sorry for the professor’s death,” he added when Anan took a breath to speak, “but they need us at the palace now. There is much to do.” He helped Anan to his feet with a hand under his elbow, then took his own handkerchief from his pocket to give to Anan.

When I had stood, the guardsmen took their places at Nasri’s head and feet and rolled him over onto his back. They gathered his shoulders and legs in their arms and lifted him, and we stood there, watching them carry the body away until they had disappeared around a corner.

Anan was looking down at the silk of his turban, lying crumpled next to the pools of blood on the cobblestones. I reached out to touch his shoulder, only to get no reaction from him. “I promise you I’ll find out why this happened,” I told him. He gave me no sign that the words had reached him, but when I took his arm, he came away with me. We left the bloody silk in the street.

***

The Coin Guard had been given orders to kill Gilad Nasri, our professor explained as we hurried the rest of the way to the palace. He had not been able to learn from their lieutenant why or who the orders had come from, but one of those questions, at least, was irrelevant. Nasri had come to the city as a diplomat; no matter who had given the order originally, the Prince d’Orsay would have known, and approved.

Sir de Courcillon left us in the entry hall to seek an audience with the prince. “Whatever you need to do to make yourself ready, De Sardet, take care of it now,” he said. “We’ll be needed before the day is over.”

I was already thinking to go find the princess. Beside me, Anan had not spoken since we’d left the place where Nasri had died, and when I glanced at him his face was grim. “Anan, you don’t have to—” I started, but he seemed to gather himself and spoke before I’d finished.

“No. I have a part in this, too. I want to know what happened.”

The palace bells were ringing the hour—eleven strikes—when Anan and I found the Princess d’Orsay standing at the stone balustrade of the gardens that looked over the old city toward the cliffs. She was alone. Two of her ladies and a Coin Guard waited a little way off on the manicured lawn.

“I should go alone,” I told him when we reached the gap in the hedge border around the garden. “She won’t guard her words with me.” He wasn’t happy to let me go, but in the end he agreed to wait.

A smile curved the princess’s lips when she saw me. “De Sardet,” she said, sounding as though nothing delighted her more than my presence. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I joined her at the balustrade. She took a seat on the stone ledge, her back toward the city, and gestured for me to sit as well. “Your Highness,” I said, inclining my head slightly. I sat, taking a moment to be sure of my first words before I spoke. “I was given a message for you.”

“And that is?”

“Gilad Nasri says to tell you that Constantin has gone to the forest park with a party of scholars from the Bridge Alliance.”

Her stillness was the only indication she gave that my words had caught her off balance. She’d had years of experience at games of politics, and her skill no doubt was one of the factors that gotten her crowned as the Prince d’Orsay’s second wife.

“Is Gilad here at the palace?” she asked lightly. As I watched, her expression relaxed, smoothing into the mask she wore of faint amusement, as though everything were a joke.

“No, Your Highness. He was shot dead in the street.”

At that she huffed a laugh under her breath, and I could see her taking my measure again. I had spoken to her only a handful of times since my apprenticeship with Sir de Courcillon had begun, and conversing with her now, I felt my heart beating faster as though I were sparring with Kurt in the courtyard.

She turned her head to look out over the city. “All the world is a stage,” she said, measuring the words out, giving them weight. “And all the men and women merely players. They have their entrances—and their exits.”

“A poem?” I asked because she was expecting it.

“Lines from a play,” she replied. “A comedy, in fact.”

“Is this a tribute to him?” I had to swallow my frustration. If she wanted to play with me, I would play—but she would give me what I wanted in return. “Who was Gilad Nasri to you, Your Highness?”

She met my eyes, and there was the chill in her gaze under the mask. “Someone who served his purpose,” she said.

“And that was?”

“You do realize, De Sardet, that the message Gilad gave you was a threat against your cousin. You’re wasting time with these questions.”

“Then perhaps you should stop playing games with me, Your Highness, so we can find a way to save him.”

She smiled at me, and I thought that I might have won a point—unintentionally, since I had no idea how the princess kept score. “Gilad’s purpose was his own,” she said. “I suggested to him that the Congregation would be ready to join the Bridge against Thélème if he succeeded, but the machinations were his alone.”

His alone. Nasri was killed to keep anyone from suspecting the Congregation’s involvement in the events that had sunk any hope of peace between the Bridge Alliance and Thélème. “You meant no one to know your agreement. –It must have been more than a suggestion. And now the Bridge and Thélème will be at war again with no knowledge of our involvement. Why?”

“Surely you can guess? –With our friends at peace with each other, how long do you believe we would have before one or the other of them began to turn a hungry eye on us? The malichor has made us weak, De Sardet. We are strong beside the Bridge and Thélème only while they are at each other’s throats.

I said nothing for a moment, thinking, and when I looked at her again, her smile had turned mocking. “—While I do appreciate the credit you are no doubt giving me,” she said. “I am not the villain of whatever story you’re concocting in your mind. We all answer to the same person.”

“You were wrong in one thing,” I countered, stung by her smile into speaking more sharply. “Gilad hasn’t acted alone. Someone else knew his plan and is holding Constantin now for leverage against you.”

“You’ll go.” It might have been a command, but it wasn’t. We both knew she didn’t need to command me to go. I nodded.

“Don’t return without ending anyone and everyone who knew what Gilad and I discussed. Anyone with knowledge of that conversation is a threat to us.”

“You’re asking me to be your assassin.”

“No, De Sardet, I am commanding you,” she said, standing, and I got to my feet as well. She would dismiss me at any moment to carry out this order, and there wasn’t a word I could say to change that. “The Congregation will demand anything it needs of you—and death is the safest way to keep secrets.

“If you fail,” she added, “think what that will mean. We will be at war, and the prince will keep his son close. We may not be able to hold New Sérène and certainly won’t be sending people as useful as yourself there.” She was searching for a string she could pull, in case Constantin’s life wasn’t inducement enough to make me obey.

I had gotten more than I’d wanted, and now I felt every moment passing. I bowed to take my leave. “Your Highness,” I said, “I will do everything I can to bring him back.”

“I know.”

Anan was waiting for me in the shadow of the archway that led to the courtyard we used for our weapons training, leaning against the stones with his arms crossed over his chest and head bowed. I wondered what thoughts I had left him with. He looked up when he heard my footsteps. “What did she say?” he asked.

Telling him the whole of it would put him in danger, and I wouldn’t risk that. If I could keep Anan out of our hornet’s nest, I would. “Nasri was executed for the attack on the Thélème delegation,” I said. It was close enough to the truth.

“How did they know his role in it?”

“I don’t know, Anan,” I replied, deliberately meeting his eyes. “Our Coin Guards were in the hall, and other government officials; perhaps someone saw him give a signal. –I need to go find the professor.” I started toward the nearest door into the palace, but he caught my hand.

“You aren’t telling me everything, Lily. What did she say when you told her Professor Nasri’s message?”

He had never used my given name when we were outside of our chambers, and hearing it now made me hesitate—just a moment, a caught breath, but it was enough to confirm his suspicions. “I can’t tell you,” I said finally, facing him. “It isn’t safe for you to know.”

His eyes searched my face, and finally he let go of me and said, “Go. You’re needed.”

His tone put distance between us that hadn’t been there before. But better that than for me to risk his life by telling him the truth. There was nothing else to say. I left him there and went to gather what I would need to go after Constantin.

***

In the end, our orders sent Sir de Courcillon and me in different directions. He had been in the reception hall with the prince when a messenger had arrived from the Academy, bringing word that our Coin Guards were standing down, refusing to go into the great hall to capture the riflemen who had barricaded themselves inside. The riflemen were their brothers, from the Green-Azure Regiment of the Bridge Alliance—and the Guard did not fight its own. It was the reason why all of the nations on the continent kept their own standing armies and did not rely on the Coin Guard to fight their wars. And yet these men and women had come here disguised as scholars to rekindle the Bridge Alliance’s war, surely against the orders of the Bridge Nations Council. Someone, Gilad Nasri or another conspirator, must have paid them well for it.

The Guard had separated the delegations of Thélème and the Bridge Alliance, at least, so there wasn’t a war brewing in the streets of Sérène. But the diplomatic corps was urgently needed, and my professor with them.

His face paled and he eyed my cuirass and the double-barreled pistol at my waist when I told him what I had learned in turn while the stableboy saddled my horse, but he didn’t say anything to stop me. Someone had to go—one person, and not a unit of the Guard that would give away their purpose as soon as they were seen. Out of anyone, I had perhaps the best chance.

Sir de Courcillon held the reins while I mounted and wrapped a hand around my boot at the ankle once I was in the saddle. “Be very cautious, De Sardet,” he said. He nodded toward the pistol. “Use other weapons first.”

“I will, Professor,” I promised, though the princess’s words were there in the back of my mind. I would start with words; whether I could finish with them depended on more things than I wanted to consider.

I had taken my favorite chestnut mare, who only knew that the day was sunny and the breeze crisp, a fine day for stretching her legs. When we passed through the city gates, I let her have her head, and she flew down the road. And though the echoes of my morning headache grew loud enough that I gritted my teeth, I was happy to let her.

Farm fields studded with cottages and barns stretched away from Sérène to the north. The road quickly went from cobblestones to a dirt track rutted by the wheels of carts and the occasional carriage. I didn’t come this way often—what free time we had, we spent in some quarter or another of the city—but it was obvious even to my eyes that more of the fields had been left fallow this year, whether it was because the malichor had struck the family or the earth had failed.

My mare pricked her ears, and I looked down the road to see another horse and rider standing alongside. The rider wore a green tunic—Anan. He raised a hand to greet me when I slowed the mare from her gallop and stopped beside him. “Are you waiting for me?” I asked him.

He turned his gelding’s head and asked him to walk on. “I thought you’d be coming this way,” he said. He looked straight ahead as he spoke; he was still angry with me. “You shouldn’t go alone—whatever you’re planning to do.”

I couldn’t tell him that I might have to kill one of his countrymen. And apparently I couldn’t stop him from being there when it happened.

***

The road ended at the forest park, acres of trees that had been protected for generations to provide hunting lands for the merchant princes and a chosen few others. The leaves were just beginning to turn in the dry late summer, and beneath the unbroken canopy the ground was covered with ferns and flowers amid the leaf litter. We slowed the horses to let them pick their way over rocks and tree roots. Two horse carts had been left at the forest verge. The party Constantin was with had continued into the forest on foot, and it was only possible to follow their path by looking for the leaves that had been kicked up.

It had been years since I’d been here or even thought of this place. I had forgotten how it felt to be in the forest; here I could feel the magic that had sprung up in my blood like a forgotten inheritance. Someone had recognized it in me when I’d been very young. I remembered a few hasty lessons, but I had been too young to sit through them willingly. Whoever it was must have given me up as a lost cause, and no one had tried to take me on since then. The merchants weren’t mages. I barely thought of my abilities—what they might be—myself. In the city, I couldn’t feel this prickling on my skin like a sense that was coming alive after being asleep.

We found them in a clearing in the middle of a lush carpet of ferns, lounging on blankets around a spread of food that had been packed by the palace cooks. Their conversation stopped when they heard the horses, until Constantin recognized me. “Cousin!” he called, sitting up. “Had enough politicking?”

I didn’t have to force a smile when I saw him. I saw rifles resting on the ground next to several of the Alliance scholars—more likely soldiers playing the role—but they still looked like nothing more than a pleasure party, hunting specimens and game. If there was a messenger coming to tell them Nasri was dead, perhaps he hadn’t arrived yet. “I was jealous of you,” I called back to Constantin as I dismounted. “It’s a beautiful day for fresh air.”

I held out my hand for Anan’s reins and tied his horse up next to mine. I would need two horses. Kurt was sitting beside my cousin, and his eyes were on my cuirass and pistol. He raised his eyebrows at me in an unspoken question when I went to sit on Constantin’s other side. I avoided meeting his gaze.

Constantin held out his drinking skin to me, but the smell of wine made me grimace with remembered nausea. “I forget that you’re so inexperienced,” he said, smiling wryly at me before putting the skin to his own lips. “Wine is the best cure for everything, Cousin,” he added, raising his voice so the others could hear. They laughed, and some saluted him with their own skins. Across the circle, I met Anan’s eyes for a moment; he was keeping a watch on me.

Despite my worries, the smell of food had woken my stomach, and I remembered that I hadn’t yet eaten today. I took some sliced ham and ripe red grapes from the bounty spread across the blankets and ate them slowly, listening as conversations started up again as though I had nothing but an empty afternoon before me. Constantin had another skin, this one still half full of water, and I drank from that, the water as sweet as if I’d been parched for days.

Constantin had lost interest in the conversations nearest him and turned to me. Before he could speak, I asked, “Have you discovered anything interesting on this expedition?”

“So many things,” he replied, huffing a laugh. “Just don’t ask me to recall them to you.”

I smiled and reached for another slice of ham and a piece of crusty white bread to go with it. I could imagine he’d been more interested in talking with anyone and everyone than whatever scientific studies were being conducted by the scholars. “You don’t remember a thing? You know the professor will want details when we get back.”

He gave me a long-suffering look, then twisted to look over his shoulder. “There was a magnificently ugly fungus on a dead tree,” he said. “That way.” He pointed.

“Show me?” I asked. I stood and held out a hand to help him up.

He was skeptical, but he let me pull him to his feet. “Why the sudden interest, Cousin?”

“If you paid attention during our lessons,” I replied lightly, “you might realize I _am_ interested. –Kurt, do you want to join us?”

Others were getting up from the blankets as we left, but no one made as if to follow us. I saw Anan leaning over to talk to the woman sitting next to him, who was listening intently to whatever he was saying. He didn’t look up as we left.

It was Kurt who broke the silence once we could no longer see or hear the makeshift camp. “You’d better tell us what this is about, Green Blood.” He stopped, folding his arms across his chest.

I told them the story, starting with the stranger who had sat in our gallery this morning, keeping my voice low even though no one from the camp could possibly hear us. After I’d told them the words Nasri had spoken before he died, Kurt angled himself to keep an eye on the path we’d taken away from the camp, watching for shadows in the trees.

Constantin’s brow was furrowed, and he looked off into the forest, thinking. “They want to use me against my father. –But why? We’re already allied with the Bridge. What are they thinking to gain?”

“Your mother made a promise to Nasri that we would fight with them against Thélème if his plan succeeded,” I said. “He must not have trusted her word. He wanted to keep you for surety.”

He laughed once at that. “Well, we do know my mother—and apparently this Nasri did as well. I wonder just how much.” He looked from Kurt to me, recovering some of his good humor. “How are we getting out of this one?” Likely he was looking forward to a real bout for once.

“You and Kurt will take the horses,” I said. Kurt met my eyes, and I could tell from the way his expression had gone severe that he knew what I was about to say. “I’ll stay here to make sure no one follows you,” I continued before he could say anything against it.

Kurt blew out a breath at the same time Constantin said forcefully, “ _No._ ” He was angry now. “Do you think I’m going to leave you here? –If we go, we all go.”

“Someone else here knows the agreement your mother made with Nasri,” I said. I made myself be calm in the face of all his passion. “She ordered me to make sure they wouldn’t speak.”

“So you’re risking your life for my mother?” he asked, as though the possibility was something that couldn’t even be considered. Yesterday I would have agreed with that. “Kurt,” he added, looking for an ally.

“Kurt, you’re sworn to protect Constantin,” I reminded him when he opened his mouth to speak.

He scowled at me, and I thought he might throw up his hands and be done with both of us. Instead he said, “She’s right, Your Highness. We need to get you out.”

Constantin turned his back to pace away from us, muttering something I couldn’t hear under his breath. He stopped a few steps away and stood there for several long moments, hands braced on his hips, shoulders hunched, while I kept my mouth closed on all the other things I might have said to convince him. Then I heard him exhale. “Let’s go,” he said, coming back to us. He kept his eyes pointed past me as he walked by.

We started back to the camp, Constantin striding ahead of us, but when my thoughts turned to the horses, I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach. “Wait,” I said. Then louder, “Constantin, wait.”

He stopped and looked at me, but unwillingly. “What is it, Green Blood?” Kurt asked.

“Anan would have told them most of what I just told you,” I said. How could I not have realized sooner? I shouldn’t have let him come with me. “Not everything—he doesn’t know everything—but enough for them to guess why I’m here.”

Kurt met my eyes. I could tell he was several steps ahead of me, while my thoughts were floundering. “They’ll be guarding the horses,” he said. “If they haven’t taken them away. We’ll go around. We can get to the horses without going through the camp.”

We didn’t need to discuss what would happen next. If there was a guard on the horses, Kurt would have to incapacitate him, so he and Constantin could get away.

We were able to stay out of sight in a hollow most of the way back to the camp and found a spot to conceal ourselves behind two old trees growing so close together that their trunks met. The horses were still tied to the tree at the edge of the clearing where I’d left them, but a man stood there as well, his rifle held loosely in one hand.

“Let me distract them,” I murmured to Kurt. He nodded, focused on the guard.

Behind me, Constantin made a sound as if he’d stopped himself from speaking. I rested one knee on the ground and turned to look at him. This time he met my eyes.

“I’ll be careful,” I said. “I’ll follow behind you as soon as I’ve settled things here.”

He wanted to argue, but he knew me well enough to know that nothing he could say, no matter how much feeling he put into it, would keep me from doing something once I’d made up my mind. “Give me your word,” he said finally, his voice strained the way it became when he was angry.

“You have it.” I held out my hand to him, and he took it and squeezed, rubbing his thumb across the back of my glove. Then he let me go.

“Don’t let them get behind you,” Kurt muttered, as I started to move in a crouch toward the far end of the clearing.

“Don’t let them catch _you_ ,” I replied over my shoulder, and he chuckled.

I watched the scholars breaking camp for a few moments once I had found some cover. Several of them were gathering up the food to put back into baskets and shaking out the blankets. Anan stood with the woman he had sat next to earlier; they were speaking with two of the soldiers-in-disguise near where I’d hidden myself. There had been another armed man with the group earlier. They must have sent him to follow our trail through the woods, once they’d realized why I’d come. If I had to wager—and now it seemed like I had no choice—the woman seemed to be the most likely candidate for Nasri’s co-conspirator. I took my pistol from my belt.

The soldiers and Anan reacted fastest when I stepped out from behind a knot of shrubs, my pistol aimed at the woman. In a breath of time, I had two rifles pointed toward me—until the soldiers heard the sound of hooves thumping on tree roots. They started and turned; I didn’t. I could hear Kurt and Constantin both urging the horses on. Kurt must have taken care of the guard quietly, leaving me one less rifle to worry about.

“De Sardet,” Anan said, his tone a warning, but I couldn’t look at him.

I met the woman’s eyes. “I want to talk."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Since Shakespeare is apparently a thing in Greedfall. This quote is from "As You Like It"--and yes, she knows she's misquoting the bard. ;)
> 
> Also, does anyone know if there's a way to stop the notes from the first chapter repeating after the other chapters? Let me know if you do. Thanks!


	3. Exeunt Tous Les

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end of this chapter has minor spoilers for the beginning of the game.

“I want to talk.”

She hadn’t lost her composure when I’d stepped out of the woods with my pistol trained on her, and now she stared at me, more indignant than afraid, though her pale skin had gone even paler. “Forgive me if I suspect you have other intentions,” she snapped.

“I don’t want this to end violently,” I said, keeping my voice calm. “But I needed to keep your attention.”

She considered me for a long moment, then glanced toward where the horses had been. “You knew why we brought the princeling here. –All right, I’m listening. Say what you have to say.”

“I’m giving you a chance to save your life,” I said. “The Congregation won’t give up its neutrality or its alliance with Thélème. Whatever agreement Gilad Nasri told you he made, if you say a word about it, things will end badly for you.”

“If you aren’t prepared to kill me now, how do you propose to accomplish that?”

I smiled, closed-lipped, but it was purely a show. I could only hope they didn’t notice how I was almost trembling with nerves. “You went against the wishes of the Bridge Nations Council,” I replied. “They wanted to end the war. Do you think they’d turn down the opportunity to reach an accord with Thélème and save face all with one execution? I don’t know your name, madam, but I assure you I can find that out and give it to them.”

She seemed to hover on the edge of a decision for a moment. Then she raised her hand, closed it in a fist, and the riflemen fingered their triggers. Gritting my teeth, I pulled back the hammer of my pistol.

Help came from an unexpected quarter. “She’s the best shot here,” Anan said. He put his hand on his companion’s fist and was pushing her arm down. “I watched her outshoot five Alliance soldiers in the arena last night. Four rounds of shooting, a shot drunk before each round, and she hit the bullseye on all but the last. She’ll kill you before you can kill her.”

It was true. I’d won the double-barreled pistol in my hand last night in that contest, which Constantin had gotten me into with his bragging about his cousin, the expert markswoman. I wasn’t proud of it, though, when Anan told the story.

The woman met my eyes, then looked past me. “Lower your weapons,” she said, and the soldiers relaxed their arms.

I had just met Anan’s eyes when I saw movement in the corner of my own, someone behind me. Something hard cracked down on my cheekbone. There was blinding pain, and I came back to myself on my elbows and knees in dry leaves with no sense of how I’d gotten there. The right side of my face throbbed, and my stomach threatened to heave up what little food I’d eaten. Hands seized me under my arms and pulled me to kneel upright.

I couldn’t have said how I did it—but I felt my skin shiver with magic and the earth come alive under me, and I reached down, deep. And something responded. The earth trembled. The hands let go of my arms.

“Mage,” one of the soldiers grated out, and then there was a rifle barrel pressed against my head and another pointed at me from farther away.

“Stand down!” Anan. I knew he was speaking to me as much as to the Bridge soldiers. I did stop, but it was more out of shock and surprise at what I’d managed to do than in response to his words.

But the rifles hadn’t moved. “I said stand down, soldiers,” Anan repeated, his voice gone cold. “By order of a captain of the First Regiment.”

His rank compelled their obedience. Even if these men were Coin Guards, a captain was a captain. They lowered their weapons and stepped back to stand at attention. I lowered myself to brace one hand on the ground and looked up at him. Anan had never told me that he was in the Alliance’s army. Had the professor known? And why had Anan come to us at all?

He knelt down on one knee in front of me. Even without his turban and with his tightly curled hair flattened against his head, he conveyed the schooled dispassion of a noble’s son. “We won’t speak, De Sardet,” he said. He spoke as a captain to a foreign emissary, and his expression was closed off as he studied my face. “We don’t need the Congregation to fight our war.” This he said louder, for the benefit of the others. Then, “Let’s end this here.”

He meant everything between us.

I nodded and forced myself to meet his gaze. “We won’t threaten you,” I said. I couldn’t put the same coolness into my voice. “You’re free to go.”

***

Anan had pulled me to my feet and put a water skin in my hand. He had let me leave ahead of them, all without speaking another word to me. There was nothing left for the two of us to say.

It was over five miles back to Sérène, but I would make it back well before dark if I walked at a steady pace. At the pace I was stumbling along, though, that was far from certain.

I wasn’t a mile out of the forest before I heard galloping hoof beats and looked down the road to see my chestnut mare eating up the ground between us, Kurt crouched low over her neck, urging her on. I raised a hand to him, and he sat back, drawing her up in front of me.

“Green Blood!” He swung out of the saddle and came toward me, and before I could come up with some offhand remark, he’d taken my chin in his hand and was tilting my head to get a better look at the impressive bruise I was sure had started to color my skin.

“Constantin?” I asked.

“He’s safe,” Kurt replied, letting me go so he could look the rest of me over for injuries. “Safe and pissed,” he amended.

“I’m sure I’ll hear about it later,” I said, a wry smile twisting my lips. I raised my hand to stroke the mare’s nose, and she blew gusty breaths into my palm and chewed the bit.

“Oh, you will,” Kurt said, and my smile became a grimace that pulled painfully at my cheek. He smothered a laugh in his throat. “Here, I’ll give you a leg up.”

“She’s tired. I can walk.”

“The horse didn’t get struck in the face with the butt end of a rifle. –You’ll ride,” he said and took me by the shoulders to maneuver me closer to the saddle. Obediently, I bent my knee when he put a hand on my boot, and he boosted me onto the mare’s back. He took the reins, and we started walking back the way they had come.

Before long, I was silently grateful that Kurt had made me ride. But now that I didn’t have to focus on walking, I could feel all my pains. I sipped from the water skin and tried to think of nothing more than swinging along in the saddle with the mare’s gait—or even the aches still pounding through my head—but Anan’s words echoed in my thoughts. I had made the choice to not tell him what I’d learned from the Princess d’Orsay. Perhaps I had failed him in that. But I would never know what he would have done with the information, if I’d told him back at the palace. Would he have sided with Nasri and his conspirator then, kept me from going after Constantin?

He had saved my life; I knew that. But that didn’t make his loss hurt any less.

I saw out of the corner of my eye Kurt glance over his shoulder at me then face forward again. “That was risky,” he said a moment later.

I managed a hollow smile. “Are you going to lecture me, Kurt?” I wouldn’t mind if he did; it would be a distraction.

“No,” he replied. “I trust you to know if something needs to be done. But know what you’re risking. You could have died today, Green Blood.”

“I know.”

I did know. But the truth was that I hadn’t thought about it, not really, before I’d acted or even while I’d been standing there in the clearing with two rifles aimed at me. First Constantin’s safety, then the outcome for my country, had left me with enough worries to snare my thoughts. I knew I should be afraid of the possibility, but I could hardly imagine what it might be like to die. I was more afraid of the small deaths I would suffer daily if I lived my life as nothing more than my mother’s daughter.

***

Kurt delivered me up to my chambers and Eugenie, who put a hand to her mouth when she saw my face.

“Rest,” Kurt ordered as he left. “I don’t want to see you until that bruise is gone.”

“But that might be weeks!” I protested, and then instantly regretted speaking so hastily when I felt the blood pounding against my skull. “Are Coin Guards so soft?” I added, trying to hide a wince.

“You aren’t a Coin Guard, my lady,” Kurt threw back at me over his shoulder as he strode back down the corridor. “Rest.”

I would test his resolve when I felt better, but for now it was a relief to give myself up to Eugenie, who removed my hat and unbuckled my cuirass with gentle efficiency as I struggled to pull off my gloves. She took my coat and the belt with my pistol, leaving the sash around my waistcoat, and I sank down onto the couch in my small sitting room so she could pull off my boots.

“Will you go to bed, my lady?” Eugenie asked, and I forced my eyes open to look at her. I used to ask her to do away with “my lady” and call me De Sardet like most others did now, but she’d stubbornly refused until I had been the one who’d given up. If she’d done it out of a feeling of servitude, I would have kept protesting. But Eugenie had been with me as long as I could remember; there was affection in the way she said it.

“No,” I said, after a moment of being tempted by the idea of playing the delicate lady for an afternoon. “The professor may need me.”

“At least lie down here, then,” she said, and I nodded.

I was lying on the couch and drowsing when distantly I heard a sharp knock at the door and the drum and creak of boots walking across the wooden floor. I only truly came awake when I sensed someone standing over me, and I opened my eyes to see Constantin looking down at me, tension at the corners of his eyes and mouth. I didn’t say anything, waiting for him to make up his mind whether he was going to tell me off like he’d intended to when he came in or worry over me.

“Are you badly hurt?” he asked.

I pushed myself to sit up and tucked my legs up on the cushion. Even that little effort made me dizzy and sent that pounding through my head. “I think it might hurt less if my head had fallen off,” I answered honestly, “but I’ll be fine. By tomorrow it will look worse than it actually is.” I hadn’t made it to a mirror to look at myself, but I felt carefully with the tips of my fingers the tender, swollen skin that ringed my cheekbone from my temple halfway down my face.

His eyes followed the progress of my hand for a moment, then he turned away and walked to the window. “I wish you hadn’t done that,” he said.

“It had to be done, Constantin.” By his tone, I knew what he’d decided, and mentally I braced myself.

His shoulders tensed. “But not by you. Not alone. You sent me off like a crying child, and I had to _stay here_ while Kurt went after you, wondering if you’d died.”

He turned to pin me with an accusing stare. “Can you imagine what it’s like to have to wait and not be able to do a damn thing?”

“I wanted you to be safe,” I said softly. “But I’m sorry that I worried you.” He had a right to be angry. But there was nothing I could do, except apologize after the fact. If I had to face the same choice fifty times, I would make the same decision.

It wasn’t what he wanted me to say. “Safe,” he repeated and looked around the room as though he wanted to tear the walls down. He paced in front of my couch, forward and back, and I watched him until he stopped in front of me and said, “If that’s how you feel, Cousin, then stay here safe with me.”

I was hardly going to let Constantin bully me back into a dress and a life spent in parlors. “Would you be so worried about me if I was a man?” I asked him. He started to answer and then stopped, looking away.

“Constantin…have some faith in me.”

He sighed, then came to sit next to me, wrapping his hand around mine where it rested on my thigh. “Your skills are truly amazing. But you are my fair cousin,” he said, giving me a rueful smile. “And if you’re asking me to slap you on the back and send you out into the world like a man, I don’t think I can do it.”

“You were quick enough to bet on me last night,” I reminded him.

“You were shooting at targets. Not soldiers with rifles.”

“There wasn’t any shooting,” I said. He looked at me, but I didn’t offer anything else. I wouldn’t be helping myself at all if I told him what had happened. I might have died two different times if Anan hadn’t been there.

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked, and I realized I had to tell him after all or his imagination would invent a story that was equally terrible or worse. I told him everything in a detached way, as though I was reporting events to Sir de Courcillon or his father—which undoubtedly I would have to do at some point—even the way magic had woken in my blood and almost gotten me killed and the way Anan had stepped in to stop the situation from ending in bloodshed.

The clock in the corner was striking half past three as I finished. When the chimes faded and I said nothing else, Constantin looked down at our hands. “Lily,” he said, and I heard everything he hadn’t said yet behind my name. Constantin almost never used my given name; he always had his own pet name for me.

“I want to do this, Constantin,” I said before he could continue. “I want to do well at it. You’ll have your role on Teer Fradee—this can be mine.”

“You’re sure this is what you want? Kurt told me about the other time; he said you’d had to kill a man when you were ambushed out in the city. He said it was hard on you.”

“Yes,” I said reluctantly. “It was. –But if I’m going to be in the world, I have to be ready for its dangers.”

We looked at each other for a long moment, until he saw that he wasn’t going to convince me. He sighed. “Take someone with you when you travel, at the least,” he said finally. “Take Kurt. –How much trouble am I going to get into in the governor’s palace?” When I smiled, he tugged on a wisp of hair by my ear, and added, “Don’t answer that.”

Constantin’s moods might change as often as the weather, but he never let himself be angry for long—on the surface, at least. Behind his breezy attitude, this would stay between us like a storm that had passed but left a charge in the air. It might flare up again in the future out of an otherwise blue sky.

With all the angry words behind us, he stayed with me. I watched him go to ask Eugenie to have supper brought up for us from where I lay on the couch. After she left, he asked me about Anan, watching me with a careful expression that avoided revealing what he thought about the disastrous end of my liaison. My feelings were still raw; I didn’t want to talk about it, even with Constantin. “We both chose what was most important to us,” I said. I shifted over onto my side and closed my eyes, putting an end to the conversation.

I heard his footsteps crossing the floor, going to the window probably. Time passed—enough that I was stuck deep in unhappy thoughts again, not enough that I managed to fall asleep—when I heard the clock chime, four strikes following the melody. Not a moment after that, Constantin said, “There’s the professor coming back.” I heard his voice clearer as he turned to me, and I opened my eyes. “I think it’s over.”

***

In Sérène we called it the War of Seven Bells, seven hours of chaos and a political near-disaster. In Thélème and the Bridge Alliance, it had been one more day in the war that had gone on so long it didn’t need a name. It was just The War.

The Congregation kept its neutrality. Sir de Courcillon shared with Constantin and me during our tutoring the letters that came to the Prince d’Orsay or to him to instruct us in the more political aspects of war and the way to balance relationships with our friends and allies. Our professor did not use words like “lie” or “intimidate,” though when I listened now I heard them implied sometimes in his lectures. Those lessons I’d had more bluntly from the Princess d’Orsay, and I knew too much to hope that I would never have need of those tactics.

The last year before our departure passed quickly, more so after the malichor took hold of my mother and I watched her dying a little more each day until she was blind and couldn’t stand up from her chair.

In comparison, the day we were due to set sail was so tedious it was almost comical. Problems seemed to come out of every alleyway in the old city, and any one of them could have made us miss the tide—the most worrying being that my cousin had been nowhere to be found. But with Constantin recovered, business settled with all our friends, and a monstrous creature left dead on the docks, we finally took our first steps off of the continent to chase our far shore. Constantin rambled across every inch of the deck of the ship (not a boat), giddy with more than wine. When the sails caught the wind, he joined Kurt and me at the rail, and we watched as the city and the palace became small on the horizon.

“ _That_ is a sight to remember, friends,” he said, grabbing Kurt’s shoulder to lean on him as the ship rocked against the waves. Kurt gave me a look that said he would dump Constantin in the sea imminently if I didn’t drag him off. “Sérène, quiet and lovely—and far away.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My first outline for this chapter was basically:  
> \- How the hell are we getting out of this one?  
> \- Constantin and De Sardet argue.
> 
> Also, this story was inspired by one line Constantin has in the game when he says something like, You're the only one I put in danger, Cousin, and you know how I feel about that.
> 
> The next story in the series will be a big jump forward in time and a change of pace. :)

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Galentine's Day, Valentine's Day, and International Fanworks Day! I'll be celebrating by (hopefully) finishing the first chapter of the next story in the series and remembering why I love writing and reading fanfiction, even though writing can be the best and the worst at the same time. And chocolate. Definitely going to be eating some chocolate. >^.^<
> 
> Also, I changed the tag on this story to Constantin/De Sardet after reading more about tags (still a newbie here). We're still pre-relationship, but the / is coming!
> 
> Almost forgot! Chapter 2 will be up 2/22, and Chapter 3 will be up 2/29.


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